NES 396 - Palamedes

Palamedes, the ultimate dice shooting challenge. Eeeh! And welcome to Nostalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. Palamedes, a figure in Greek mythology said to be the inventor of dice, which is why a game revolving around dice may be named after him.

Still kind of an obscure reference that I'm sure no kid connected with. Oh, you took that from the manual, didn't you? Did I? I mean, there is a section in the manual that kind of goes over this, and it's all wrong.

okay so what's right uh that i guess he's sort of attributed with creating dice but they say that like just earlier sorry like i this is like my main thing in this episode is that it is believed that dice were in existence as far back as 67 AD which is like not ancient Greece agreed middle roman empire like people are like measuring their years in like forward numbers now uh it's just completely wrong and that's that's like the big that's the big selling point of this episode

is that the game's wrong. Yeah, I mean, that's why I did not like this game. Yeah. No, I'm just kidding.

Well, what is this game? It is a puzzle game where you have to constantly choose your next piece. It doesn't randomly drop down on the screen like most of these puzzle games. You hold a die and you change its face from one through six, like a standard dice. And you throw that die up on the screen, upwards, not downwards, to match the dice in a...

slowly descending wall, creating a poker hand. I mean, this sounds crazy, right? There's dice, there's cards. Creating a poker hand that you will then submit or enter into the program. to clear a certain amount of lines on the puzzle, the descending wall that's coming at you based on the poker hand that you made. So while you might just make like... a simple three of a kind and clear one line if you did something really cool like

one, two, three, four, five, six in a line, clearing each one of them in order, that would give you, um, a, I think it's four lines, uh, which clears an awful lot because basically it's nine lines and your crush. I think it's five. Five lines, see? So that's the biggest price. It's on the cart, Mike. Damn, you're looking at all the images and I'm just looking over here at my notes. But yeah, that's what I'm saying. So there's...

It matters, I think, because right now we're in a bit of a puzzle boom between Tetris, which we had, believe it or not, earlier this year. Oh my god, that was this year? well i don't know when we recorded it but like no no i know but i mean it was yeah it was 1990. yes yeah yeah that's insane 1990s going on forever you have tetris and then like very recently we had dr mario those kinds of games

Puzzle blocks falling down and you have to clear them this one. They're like, you know what? Big idea. What if it came down at you instead and you had to shoot your pieces upwards? Does the bus to move? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Does the dice and hands, like creating hands theme here, make this feel more like a poker casino thing? Or is this just like your typical puzzle action game?

To me, it initially, you know, the first thing you think when you see this game is, okay, this is a Tetris-like. It looks very like Tetris. It plays very like Tetris. But I think what the poker thing brings to it is not that it makes me feel like, oh, I'm playing a poker-like game. It's like knowing the rules of poker helps here. It's not exactly one-to-one because you got a hand of six.

and you know it's just a one through six there's no like face cards or anything like that but like what the poker thing brings to it is actually really differentiating it from tetris to me you know it's whereas tetris you can't choose what piece you have next This, you're only choosing what you have next. And whereas Tetris, like you're trying to, you know, just sort of get those, those straight, whatever those, those straight lines or whatever you want to call them, like the.

what am i saying line of blocks in a row like that this is like there's a little different type of thinking to it so i think what the all that to say i guess is that um My initial thought on this was like, okay, this is Tetris, but all these little nuances about poker and everything really make it feel like a different game that just happens to look aesthetically like Tetris.

Yeah, you're right. It's pretty superficially Tetris-like. It's got all of the visual user interface motifs of something like that. But what you're actually doing... is a bit more, yeah, self-guided and kind of simpler too. Like when it's explained, when we tell you the rules, it sounds very complex, but it's really... Even more simple than Tetris.

Right, because in Tetris, you need to fill an entire line on the screen in order for anything to clear. And obviously, you can clear up to four lines at a time if you plan your Tetris accordingly. But at the most part, you know, like... It takes a while. It takes even just a little bit to clear anything off the screen just by creating a successful block as a line. Here...

The dice are constantly, well, not rapidly, but they are slowly coming down at you, descending from the top of the screen. And it's six dice at a time. And when you... Shoot your die. So let's say there's a one sided die up at the top of the screen and you shoot your one sided die, which you chose, right? It's not like, oh, I have.

the one block right like how in tetris you have the l-shaped block here it's like i have the one block but i could switch to the two block if i need that instead once you launch that one block at the other one block it just disappears. It becomes part of your quote unquote hand at the bottom of the screen. So you're eliminating things off the screen very quickly too. Theoretically, if you can just switch through the dice fast enough.

You could just play this game without ever clearing a hand. That is the biggest flaw in the design of this game is just that you can brute force this. There is nothing like forcing you. to actually play the game as intended so i hadn't thought of that at all but like can you really when you get to like faster levels where you're playing you know

No, but it's definitely weird that it can happen at the beginning of any level. You're not encouraged to do this. It's also weird that I use the one-sided die, shooting it at the one-sided die to... put an example of how it would clear. But it's very strange that if you send the two-sided die accidentally at the one-sided die, it just like...

It just disappears. It doesn't get added to the wall. Mistakes should be punished. I thought that was going to happen too. And then it would just sort of count in your hand which ones you touched or something. And then it would sort of... count uh it would break the wall down from there but i i don't know it's it's one of those things that it feels very it feels like it makes sense and then it it just feels a lot more simple

Yeah, what I thought was going to happen is I thought it was just going to stick. Wherever I put it, if I put it in the wrong spot, it sticks. Now my wall is one full block further down than I want it to be. But, uh...

I agree that it's weird that there's not a punishment for hitting the wrong spot. I will not pretend that I wasn't secretly so happy that I didn't get punished for that because that made this game so much easier for me, but it still wasn't like... oh this is too easy of a game depending on what mode you're playing oh yeah if it gets fast it gets harder yeah and also like if you're playing the tournament mode against the computer like those computers are actually like they're no joke

It's hard to get through that whole tournament. That's true. I'm thinking more in the single player, which I guess is baby mode, because the biggest part about the multiplayer is that the... And that's where... making hands actually make sense because these hands like these sorry these uh lines that you're clearing don't just go into the void like in single player they go to your opponent and now they've got all of that to work through so

Yeah, I think the real version of this game is multiplayer. Yeah, which is funny because they have it here early on too, but like Tetris didn't have that yet, but Tetris, Puyo Puyo, all those games would add this sort of idea of like... Junk blocks going over to your opponent and that being like the main game mode of any of these right is like this competitive

whether with computers or with your friends, this competitive like clear stuff as fast as possible so that it fills up the opposing players lines as well. Because I mean, think about it in Tetris. That could be devastating. You're sending. junk blocks over that kind of block their potential Tetris that they were setting up. And now they have to clear these junk blocks before you send more over. That doesn't quite happen here, but there is still a rush in like a...

In a game where you only have, I think, nine or ten lines before it crushes you, sending over four lines is devastating. Yeah, and it's crazy in multiplayer how quickly the tide can turn because of that.

Because it can be, you know, your opponent can have, like, you know, one or two lines at the top, and you can have, like, six lines. And then you just got to get, like, one really good hand and clear six lines, and suddenly it's, like, seven to nothing. Like, they have seven lines, you have zero. You know, so, like, it does...

really changed fast. Now, Sean, don't be upset, but me and Joe did play multiplayer of this game. A lot of it, actually. Yeah. It was funny because I think this is a very interesting story where like we both didn't understand the hands thing at first. We read the manual. It's on the cart.

No, I know, but we don't have the card. Come on. Oh, I thought this was one of those games you played, like, on the heart. It's okay. No, I wish. I would love to. Well, wait a minute. Actually, I forgot. We play all the games on the card. I don't know. Oh, right. What am I talking about? The cart was inside the toaster, though, so we couldn't see it. You had a top loader.

No, I don't have the top loader. I want the top loader. It's okay. For anybody who's listening out there. He didn't let me look at any of his carts so he wouldn't allow it. Anyone listening out there, I want the top loader. Just, you know, let me know. Send him the top loader. I'm not saying for free. I'm just throwing it out there. I'm not saying I don't want, I want it like.

free of charge and just like it's hard to get all this is this is prosperity this is prosperity uh podcast yeah fortune finally comes my way no uh so what happened is is we we read the rules and you know obviously i'm talking about

Like we played like one round and just didn't understand what we're supposed to be doing because we like to go into the games blind. So then we read the rules and, you know, like I kind of caught on quickly to like, oh, this particular like hand is really easy to make. And also sends a devastating amount of lines over comparatively. And so I was doing that and I was beating Joe pretty handedly. And that wasn't fun after a while. It was fun at first to beat him a lot. And then I told him like.

Oh, well, this is the hand I'm making if you want to give it a try. And then it just became like Joe started crushing me because he was able to do it even faster than I was. What was his three pair? Yes. Three pair. And it's that was that was the detriment to me was like, well, I'm used to poker. Three pair is not something that ever popped into my head. It's like a poker hand. So I'm like trying to make a straight.

Or, like, you know, I gotta make something big, or I'm just gonna, alright, I guess I'll just do, like, you know, I'm trying to make, like, what I think is the equivalent of a full house. They also threw 21 in there for Blackjack.

which is crazy right that is the weirdest one because everything else is like three of a kind four of a kind uh one through six like a straight flush kind of thing but then blackjack is like yeah who's adding like yeah right that's that's too much and that's that was the thing you got to find that balance of is you know three pair i think was at least for our level but we were playing the perfect balance of like

easy enough to find but still gives you three lines which is a pretty good reward whereas like there are much better ones out there but but you're gonna you're gonna drive yourself nuts trying to find it and you're gonna ruin your chances because you're taking too long trying to find a straight

or or whatever and admittedly after that uh whenever i played again because i played a couple more times since because that was a while ago i wanted to be fresh three pair that's my my go-to Yeah, I really think three pairs is the way. Blackjack, just to show how silly it is, not only do you have to add the dice to 21, so hopefully you would just do like 6, 6, 6, 5. Oh, okay, yeah. Yeah, but you know what I mean.

That only clears one line. It's not even worth your time. Wait a second. Really? Are you sure? I'm pretty positive about that. That's crazy. That's a stupid... Meanwhile, just simply doing one, two, three, four, five, six, which granted has to be in order. That's another thing is like, keep in mind that because there's only six blocks in a row.

You sometimes have to strategically think about how you're going to clear these blocks to make sure that they create the hand in the order you need it. You can't do like one, three, four, five, six. if i recall correctly i guess it's also like you can combine hands like it's like if you have if you had that 21 presumably if you if you didn't just do like two pairs and and a single like

you would have something that would add an additional line. So if you did like 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, which is an example from the manual, that's a total of three lines. So you can get a little... lucky with it if you're not paying attention and it just so happens to do that but you can also if you are actually if you have some forethought and you can kind of think on the fly you can make some combos like that

Just to show you how bad I am at this, the example I gave earlier wasn't 21. So disregard building out that. It would be 6-6-6-6-5. Yeah, that's 23, right? That's 23. So you have to do 6-6-6-3. But here's what's really interesting. The straight flush, one, two, three, four, five, six, is a natural blackjack. That adds up to 21. Oh. So the flush just, or the, wait, straight flush, just the straight. Straight flush, yeah.

They're calling it a straight flush. Interesting. I wonder what makes it a flush. It's just in order. It's every color as well. Yeah, but the colors are the numbers. I know. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. see i got confused a couple times with the the ordering of things because i swear sometimes i felt like i could do the uh like the three pair thing i could do that out of order i could do one two two three three one

And it would work. And other times I felt like it wouldn't. So maybe I was, maybe I was accidentally getting something else. I wasn't recognizing when I thought that was happening, but like it's. It was unclear to me. I'm like, do I need to keep these things in order? Because then also I definitely know I couldn't get like, I could not get like two, two, two, two, three, three. That would not count as.

three pair that would count as like a full house or something i don't know but then if i had if i had two two three three two two just have the threes splitting up the twos then it counts as three pairs even though four of them are the same number that's definitely Not intentional.

And so, I mean, but that is the game, right? Is like, do you prioritize survival clears? Or do you play, like, kind of, I guess, greedy to finish a, like, bigger hand, like that three pairs? Do you try and, like, build that while your opponent is sending off, like, three of a kinds rapidly at you?

That is the strategy of the game. And ultimately, it just comes down to play style. So we could talk about that. But I just feel like that's like the most interesting part of the game is that these different hands and that there are so many of them. makes it so that this way, whatever situation you're currently in is how you have to play. If you're about to be crushed, even if it is a computer opponent, if you're about to be crushed...

You're not going to take the time to build something that clears three, four, five lines. You're going to build a thing that clears some kind of line right away because you don't have another option. Yeah. Yeah, I guess there isn't really much strategy. At that point. Yeah, it's just like the hand you've been dealt. Or you just sort of peck away at the whole thing by just shooting individual blocks.

Yeah, I'll be honest. I played a decent amount of this game after Mike and I played. I played more. I played with another friend of mine. I played on my own a couple times just in the tournament mode. The first time I ever played one player was, like, a minute ago, like, during this recording. Like, I just didn't play one player. I don't know why. It's not exciting. It's just a school thing. It's not at all. Yeah. So, like, I am seeing how you could really brute force it in one player now.

But I think that this game shines in multiplayer. It feels like it's completely missing an element of danger in single player. Right, because the six-slot tray at the bottom... is the secret sauce that makes this more replayable than a match game, right? Because anything could just make it a match game with dice. I guess. I mean, I guess, like, what it needs is just...

Okay, I'm just going to take you there. Yeah, I'll accept that. Okay, I appreciate you. And there are some moments where actually the easiest hand to build, you know, if you don't have like your whole entire screen filled up is...

like a six of a kind. And that's kind of crazy. Like sometimes you just see like all of the color because it's color coded too. You just see a bunch of blue and you're like, oh, that's a six of a kind. I'm just going to go for that. And it's like crazy that something so simple is just like.

staying on the same die like i feel like the more complicated ones that require you to switch through more often should be the ones that reward more than just like well the game just happened to generate a bunch of blues for me so i can just cash these in right now and send a ton of lines over like in that way sometimes your opponent or you are just screwed by the rng yeah and that's why there needs to be like you can't

I think a better version of this game would be one in which your firing at the board does not destroy the piece. Because otherwise you can just sort of carve out... like one of the only things stopping you from making a six of a kind every time is that you have other blocks in the way that like if you were to shoot like a three instead of all the sixes that you're trying to get in a row

That's breaking up your hand and that like first six is gonna fall off the edge So you just clear out that that whole thing first and it's really not an issue Yeah, I think that the way I saw the like knocking away the blocks as you shoot them is that you sometimes have to make a hand by being strategic about what.

If there's two sixes on there and I need to use a six, I need to decide which one of those sixes I want to use based on what's behind it sometimes. A lot of times I'm using what's behind it, but yes, I do wish that when you remove a line... Like, I wish I removed it from the top and everything else scrolled up. Do you know what I mean? Because right now you remove a line and the two lines closest to you disappear if you do two lines.

i wish that the two lines at the top disappeared and everything moved up so then i could be thinking the whole time of like what's coming next that would add another layer of strategy where i'm like i need to be carving out the right path but at this point every time you get a hand you kind of delete the path you're working on. That makes sense. Yeah, that's definitely weird too. And that's also a part of like...

Like if you get like a big hand, but you only have like a line left, you got to wait for it to come down.

otherwise you're wasting but yeah and that's a strategy sometimes too in in the multiplayer where you're like i know i got something that's gonna give me four lines and i only have two lines here i'm gonna wait for those other two lines so i don't just like waste them and then you get some time to think you know it's nice yeah but what are you thinking about because all those lines are gone uh i'm thinking about just like other stuff what else am i gonna do today

What am I going to make for dinner? Lunch. Yeah. Yeah. Mostly food. And so to briefly just cover the modes, which we talked about the one player mode, which I said was just for score. Technically, there is like there's a story thing and there is an ending. There are 20 stages. Each stage, just after you clear the amount of lines that you need to to progress to the next stage, it just increases the speed. And 20 is is a pretty fast.

speed you would you would definitely not just be able to brute force your way through something like that uh you can set the starting difficulty though so uh i i wonder like what you know like yeah just like in tetris you can start the the speed that you want to start on it doesn't like start you with that score what is the advantage to starting faster like in terms of scoring right wouldn't you just want to start at like

the slowest possible speed to get the best Tetris's over and over and over again. Like it's going to speed up eventually. Anyway, you would need to have that be a priority that score. Otherwise it's just kind of boring. Yeah. Well, in Tetris, you're definitely. Just playing for the score, I feel like. But here, you know, 20 stages and you get to see, I guess you like reunite with your girlfriend or something. I don't want to assume that your girlfriend is your sister.

That gets complicated. And then there's the two-player versus mode, which is, there are, it's basically like the tournament mode for the computers, except for the tournament mode.

creates this little nice bracket, too, where you kind of see who won and lost in the other games and who you're going up against, the idea of working your way up to a champion of some sorts. But it's just that the AI just gets more... i guess intelligent as it goes on but it doesn't necessarily mean that like you uh have like oh well this character lost so now like this character is a little easier it doesn't doesn't work like that yeah

It would be kind of cool if they had different styles or something, but it doesn't seem like they really do. Well, one of them is a dog. Well, yeah, okay. Aesthetically, they have different styles. This one's like, this guy is the... The five of a kind guy. He's always making five of a kind. That's what they call him. There's no one in his hometown for this. Did you know that you have a name in this game? What's your name? Dave. Oh.

You're Dave and player two is Tammy. And then the other tournament players are Bobby, Jane, Stravinsky, Isabel. Gramps, who is the only one not wearing green. I don't know if you know this, but everybody else is wearing... Well, he is wearing green, I guess. In the manual, he's not wearing green, but he is wearing green in the game. And then, yes, the dog. Is it a dog in the manual? Its name is Nugget, and it looks like a fox. It's a dog. Okay, great. That mystery's been solved.

Those are the characters. In two-player mode, you get to also choose a best-of series, whether you want to do best of three, best of five, or best of seven. Not necessarily for Palamedes, although feel free to work it into the conversation. Just in general, what is the favorite best of format in order to create like an intense, I don't want to say playoffs because then it's clear I'm talking about sports, but just like is...

Is one game the way to go or is best of three or best of five or best of seven? If we're not talking sports. We're not talking sports. We're just talking about in general, create the most exciting environment. What is like the most tense? I would say that for like a fighting game.

Or I guess like a head-to-head game like this, it would be best of three. Why? I don't know, because I think like, you know, best of seven, that's just too much. I think you get... you you have room to make some mistakes like what one like it's not sudden death elimination you you can have a round where you're just sort of poking and prodding and then you can

get to the rubber match hopefully and and take it like i think and it's also not going to take forever for a video game i guess now that you're saying that i i agree where it's like It's the lowest number of matches that you can have where you can still have that exciting tiebreaker.

Yeah, I'm glad you said it, Sean. I wasn't meaning to be hard on you. I just wanted you to put it in your words because I do agree. I think best of three is perfect. You keep apologizing to me, Mike. It's really unnerving. Well, because I'm putting you on the spot. He's hard on you because he knows you can handle it. Explain the thing I just asked you. Earlier you were like, I'm sorry, Sean, but Joe and I played this game. Well, because it's going to become a recurring theme.

For the next couple episodes. We played a lot of two-player games that night. When you had your little tryst. Yeah, so I just want to get it out of the way now and not have to, like, every episode apologize. No, it's okay. It's okay. I don't want the rumors going around online that like, you know, oh, I heard Sean's going the way of Sam, you know, like I don't need people talking like that. No, but truly I agree with the best of three thing because.

best of seven and not even does it also like introduces i don't know some luck some like some some boringness if like if it's like a clear breakaway right if like one team is just superior to the other or players superior to the other it gets kind of boring

best of three gives like the winner the advantage right so it's not like the first game doesn't mean anything it means a lot because now they'll be able to play at least two more um or at max two more but like i think that there is something really special about just like being down.

and knowing they're down and coming back and winning two in a row and then being like, that's the comeback story. Not like, oh, they won a game, then we won a game, then they won a game, then we won a game. It's like, how long does that go on for? Oh, so you're just kind of venting about tennis right now. Tennis, World Series. Yeah, hockey. Hockey especially because hockey does like best of seven from the beginning.

It's like crazy frustrating for the playoffs. I really like that about hockey, but I was thinking more about like not even in a series, but more so like you have to beat them by two. right oh yes yeah that's true that is a thing in tennis that just you can go on forever right but that's kind of exciting again now then because it's like it's not the end of the match like technically it could be but most likely it's just a tie break in general

That is exciting as a way to like cap off what was a really, I mean, like those guys are playing three, four, five hours. I think that that does become then something where it's like you have to prove yourself and get two points in a row. Cause that's like, that's the, that's the, the breaker there is that like the tiebreaker it's first to seven. But then like, if you have, if you both have six.

the person can't win on seven, they have to win on eight. Or if you both have eight, the next person needs 10. Now they should keep best of seven in hockey, but then also add you have to beat them by two. I like that a little bit, but I also think like best of seven is fine, but it's so damn long that it's like, don't even have a regular season. Just put the whole fucking league in the playoffs.

have everybody play best of sevens against each other in their leagues or whatever, seated however you want, I don't know, salary caps, and then just see who wins it and give that person the Stanley Cup. We don't need 82 games. End.

uh a three-month playoffs i disagree but uh i i take your point yeah well i'm glad palamedes is coming back into the conversation uh let's talk about just like the feel and presentation of the game. We talked about the mechanics of the game, but is the clarity, is the...

Is the presentation there in both a fun and exciting way, but also in a way that doesn't make this hard to read from a puzzle perspective? What are your thoughts? I just want to note real quick that I know I keep harping on this because it's silly.

But just from product design, the fact that the rules of the game are printed on the cart is really useful because not everyone's going to still have their... uh their instruction manual forever so i think just putting it right there i haven't seen anything like that like information on the game itself um So I think that helps out just you know having a little cheat sheet on the device itself

And I guess it's just like, if you think about, you could say the single player has a UI, but even just in the versus mode, it's just... your screen your your puzzle screen and the opponent's puzzle screen and that's it there's no there's no score there's no timer it's just the gameplay is the entirety of the screen and just having that clean ui of just

you know, these descending dice and your little six lot tray and your little character who is basically like invisible after a while to you. Like I didn't even remember that like. there's someone throwing these dice. Like I'm just kind of in a groove where it's a cursor. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So like, it's all like, it's just,

It's just enough for a puzzle game where it's like a little bit above Tetris, where it's not just falling blocks, right? There's like some sense of character and colorfulness, but it's also like not in the way. They celebrate a little bit when they clear a line, but it's not like they take up the entire screen to celebrate or it pauses gameplay. I think they found a good balance here.

Yeah, I think as far as presentation, as far as like sprites and everything, I actually, I like the little sprites of you and your opponents a lot. I think because it gives me this nostalgic feel of Pokemon sprites, like Pokemon. humans in the old Pokemon game sprites. So it kind of gives me that feel. But also, there was just something about the way that you move where it doesn't feel like you're moving and you're snapping to a grid.

But functionally, you are. Like, you're not going to hit in between two dice. And I'm never confused. I'm like, wait, which one did I hit? So, like, that felt good because it's like, theoretically, there's only, what? How many? across there's six across yeah so theoretically there's only like six squares on this grid and it should feel kind of like you snap from one to the other which i think would would feel worse and somehow it does it feels smooth

but never gets confusing of like, am I in between these two or am I right on? Like you always know what you're shooting. I get what you mean there. What is one habit or technique that you would recommend to a new player to instantly be better at this game?

um i guess like i guess it's kind of obvious when i say it but uh try to get used to cycling through the dice in the order that you need them you know you know i mean if you need if you need to get like the a three and then a five and there's a one buried like start with the three get to that right immediately and like don't go don't go get that one because you got to cycle back around to the five like to the five does that make sense

it sounds like an obvious thing to do but it's very easy to get like kind of caught up in like the pressure When you're playing against an opponent where you're like, okay, I know I need that one and it's the closest thing to me physically. So I'll cycle all the way back around to the one to get it. And you actually lose a lot of time by doing that.

rather than being as like uh effective as possible by just like hitting things as you cycle through because i don't know if we mentioned but in order to switch die you don't like use the d-pad or something to go back and forth you just hit the the b button i believe and you just you advance one number you go from one to two to two to three and then until you loop back around to one you can't go backwards

Yeah, there should have been a dice peripheral that you could plug into the NES and you turn it to that side and the game recognizes what side you're on. Perfect. So you want to have it? Yeah, I want you to give us one of the seven highly effective habits for Palamedes players. So basically, yeah, if you want to be...

If you want to be a good Palameda's player, you have to make excellence your habit. I need you to work on your Palameda's game three, four hours a day that you got to have a balanced breakfast. You can't eat. high fructose corn syrup um i want you to like stop stop drinking stop smoking i need you to lock in on palomites Make excellence. Why can't Palamedes be at Evo next year? Center stage, 250 grand on the line, Palamedes. Let's do it.

And then they announce at the event Palamedes 2. What would that entail? They don't have to do that, Sean, because it exists. It actually already came out on the Famicom. So technically it could be a Bytes episode. If we wanted it to be but I'm going to explain the game because This is a this is despite how complicated we might make it sound building hands by throwing dice and changing the dice to be the correct

dice to match the dice on screen. It's not that complicated. It's a very straightforward game. What would a sequel be, right? Any guesses? Seven across. Is it that or it's like it's not a D6. It's like a D8 or a D12 or something. It's the whole D&D gamut. I appreciate both of those answers because I do think that they could have... change this game in a significant way.

Other than what they decided to do for Palamedes 2 with the subtitle Star Twinkles. It's all about constellations in the sky and stuff like that. You go to the Big Dipper and the Bull and all that. shit uh what is it taurus yeah i was gonna say that i just didn't want to say that say it i did say it technically if the recording lines up i should say it at exactly the same time as you so to prove that i know a little something

about constellations, of which I don't really know anything. Yeah, so the big change in Palamedes 2 is that... The dice no longer spawn from the top of the screen. That's right. The field rises from the bottom. You stand on that stack and it's like... It's like Star Wars A New Hope where like the walls are closing in. You know, you are now like rising up to a different wall that's going to crush you as the bottom dice start to stack up and push you closer to the ceiling.

You have to grab the dice. from below you. So you can only grab the immediate line in front of you, grab the dice from below you and throw them up into your slot tray, which is now up at the top to build your hand. But you now have only a hand of four. instead of six so they said eh let's just change it to make it smaller hands which obviously makes it for much less permutations but and this is crazy there is a new chain rule

You can only take a die equal to plus one or minus one from the last die taken from either player. Wait, say that again. I know it takes a long time. to even get it in the game to get the feel. But let's say currently the game has just started. So nobody has taken a die. They will still put a die in the top center of the screen. of like what the round will start in so let's say that is uh the number three you can only play a three a four or a two oh that is all you can play

If you play something else, it gets rejected and it slowly falls back to the bottom of the screen, which is obviously very punishing to the player. But if your opponent plays four before you play two... The four gets registered, your two gets bumped, and now you either have to play a three, four, or five. Oh, so the last die played is the North Star of, like, what? The North Star, you get it. The Star Twinkles.

it's actually insane uh that they changed the game this much i don't think it needed it i really like that i wish that was a game mode you know what i think it's like it's kind of like they made a game mode its own game like how you know like there's poker and there's texas holdem like this is the texas holdem to palomitas's five card stud But obviously with four dice to make up a hand.

Uh, it's, it's obviously like a lot faster too. The, the swings happen a lot quicker because you're building hands that are a lot smaller. You're just doing one, two, three, four or two, two, two, two, uh, it, it. It's not as, you know, like you could cash in earlier in the other game. You didn't have to purposely build something of six. But now with four, you can both players are just playing faster. There's also a Game Boy.

version of palamedes it's the same core rules but obviously because it's on the game uh boy it's like much like tighter screen uh which makes it feel faster even though i don't think it's playing any faster um And then there's a bunch of like Japanese computer ports of this game.

Which means that it was obviously a little popular or interesting because there's also an arcade version came out around the same year. It might have been first, but it came out the same year as the NES game. But those are all like the same rules, different presentation based on whatever.

computer they were on or arcade so um the palamides as a franchise is really just these two games with the first game seemingly being the more popular thing and maybe two changed up too much that like they couldn't justify a third one yeah i'm i'm stuck on the uh the game boy version because i am just thinking about how much harder this game would be if it couldn't be color-coded yeah because it's just Especially on a small Game Boy screen, I mean, it's probably not...

It's probably pretty easy to get a four confused with a five when you're trying to move that fast and it's just sides of the dice. I mean, I'm just thinking about turning this game into grayscale. Which has probably, I don't know the difference in resolution between the NES and Game Boy, but it's probably illegible. Well, it's interesting because I think...

I think it's actually fine. Like, it's pretty boring colorless, which is funny that it took Game Boy so long to have color. But they did do shading on the dice so that at least, like... not they all don't have like six shades no no that's what i'm saying there's like there's like two shades and it kind of cycles between odds and even numbers okay okay but it still isn't like it's not like it's more crunched in you know it's just like

The amount of rows you have is probably less before you get crushed, if that makes sense. Like, because they had to tighten it all, but still fit six across. Yeah. So I feel like there's only like five rows instead of nine. So silly.

Let's see. Anything else? Anything else to say? I don't think so. Would you add any house rules to your multiplayer? Joe, should we have... banned three pairs no i i think that uh three pairs pretty fair and we were both using it and it was it was working for both of us i don't know um

yeah you couldn't enforce it but like would there be a rule where it's like you can't you can't play repeat hands back to back like you can play three pair but you have to play something in between yeah yeah i mean as a house rule that is hard i could see that being a like a like a setting, you know, to make it more difficult. Yeah, for the Evo 25 tournament mode. If somebody said to you that one guy invented the alphabet, numbers, weights,

measures and coinage, would you take anything after that that they said seriously? Probably not. Why? Well, that's, again, the manual for Palamedes.

Oh, Palamedes also invented all that shit, too, on top of the dice? Yeah, he invented all of that, including dice, but then they also say that primitive people would throw dice, so... uh you know take take what take from that what you will i will not let uh this game's manual die do they still teach this game's manual in in schools yeah yeah actually um At least in Greece. Say it. Palamedes may have invented a lot of things, may not have invented dice, may not have even existed, but...

There is one thing that we invented that exists, and that is the Essential Games List. Look, I had a great time on the episode. which I mostly spent profusely apologizing to my best friend, Sean. So hopefully he can find in his heart to forgive me. He talked a lot about the box and the... cartridge in the manual of which I guess I only perused a little bit of, but he never talked about the dice with

realistic human legs and I love how your essential vote is all about Sean you're like talking about Sean and not the game so no I'm just teeing up for him I would love to hear I would love to hear as part of his vote his thoughts on these dice people and if they if maybe they could have been a franchise maybe these could have been the mascots of whatever hot b the developer of this game whatever console they would put out because that was all the rage in the 90s was just put out your own console

Everybody's making them right now. 3DO, Neo Geo. The Hot B. The Hot B was a console. The Hot E B. The Hot B. No, Hot B was the developer. And I think they made a pretty great game here. Or, or whatever, whatever that means in the, in the grand scheme of the essential games list. I don't think this game hits any like essentialness because it's just like, it's a very replayable game.

for the people that enjoy it and if you don't enjoy basically like the the action puzzle game they've laid down here it's not really like a puzzle thing to solve it's just kind of like a fast thinking reflexes game if you don't enjoy that then there's nothing here. So this is like an all or nothing thing. And so I don't think I can put this on the essential games list, but it's like, for me, this is a great game. Like this is like something I'm like happy I discovered and I will play.

that's kind of similar to something i like might have said about balloon fight way back when of how it's just like it's so replayable it's so pick up and ready to go but like that one is offering something that like mechanics wise like can be enjoyed and can have like a longer stay than just the the five minute cycle of like well i figured out what this game is like you can't just like

figure out what Balloon Fight is right away. This game, you can play, build a few hands, and figure out if it's for you or not. So even though it's highly replayable from someone who enjoys it, I don't think it has the kind of replayability that a game like Balloon Fight, which is...

going to be an essential game for as long as I can hold it on the list. It's not reaching that bar. So I really enjoyed it. I look forward to hearing what everybody who played this game either growing up or because of this episode thought of it.

So please let us know, but it's a no from me. Sean? Yeah, I'll first note and acknowledge that the dice people on the front of the manual, and I think on the... front of the box of the game, uh, are off putting. They have very human looking naked legs. Uh, they do wear gloves though. Like they don't wear socks. They don't wear shoes. They are there. You see their toes, but they do wear white gloves. So it's okay. Anyway, for the game itself.

I did find, like, you know, the core loop is satisfying. I think the game itself, though, and I was only playing against computer opponents, and I wasn't... playing against uh my real human friends uh but i think that there's a pretty low skill ceiling and that means that i don't know how much enjoyment i would get out of this over time maybe if i did have human friends to play with uh i would have a different opinion but i do come to the same conclusion that it is not an essential game joe

I like this game more than I like Tetris. I think that, again, having mostly experienced this in a two-player mode, when I think of something like Tetris, Mike, I know you're pretty good at Tetris. I'm not very good at Tetris. If you and I play Tetris... you would destroy me partially because you're you're so good at tetris and partially because i'm so bad at you know i mean it's like i'm playing against you and i'm playing against the game

So, like, I think me playing against the game already hurts me if we're playing Tetris. Like, this game, that lower skill barrier means in a two-player setting, it's more like pure I'm playing against you.

does that make sense where it feels more like our skills are it's like we're going head to head and like it's not as much about like who's good at the game because like anyone could be kind of good at the game you know if you're playing single player in this um i also just found it i i don't love this style like the tetris style of game personally i just found this a little more interesting but yeah overall it's like i i enjoyed this game as i played it but like it's

It's too simple for me. It doesn't hold my interest. These types of games never do. If I didn't have to play it, I would never seek it out. Granted, I did surprisingly like...

I did surprisingly want to go back to it a couple times after playing it, but that's already kind of worn off for me. So I'm not going to vote it essential. Part of that, I think, is... just my own uh preferences but i don't think i i don't think i voted tetris essential uh so even though i like a little more than tetris uh still not up there for an essential game i like your answer there about

You know, playing against the game and against the person because, you know, you're right that like this game may just be simple enough that it's not like. Not as bare bones as like rock, paper, scissors, right? Like anybody can play that. And so we're just, I'm always playing against just you, not the game.

Right. There's a little more to it than that, but it's not as complicated as they didn't figure out how to add T-spins yet to Palamedes. But once they do, the whole the whole thing will be opened. You know, it's a good question, Joe. I don't know who voted.

uh for tetris on the essential games list i don't know if that happened did did you i wouldn't have i think we didn't no no it's not on there right i don't know yeah yeah but but i'm saying like did anybody even vote for it like that's controversial I think we all kind of just admitted that there were probably better ways to play Tetris.

I do remember that being like the NES version is not the best way, but I don't know if I would vote any version of Tetris Essential. It's funny because the NES version of Tetris, just to get into it for saying, because I'm sure our audience is still mad at us for not even considering it.

of tetris is definitely its own thing too like they just never made another tetris like that one but i don't think that that means that its uniqueness also makes it stand out like i i i saw the the nasa spaceship take off

uh for the final ending of the game and i was like cool never need to go back and see that again like it's just like there's they're not offering anything compared to like what modern tetris offers which is so exciting it's kind of like pac-man once i played pac-man championship edition

Why would I ever play regular Pac-Man again? Ever. Whoops. Palamedes, right? Once I see it coming from the bottom, why would I ever want to play it on the top now that I've seen that the dice can come up from the ground? Now that the technology is there. It's a slippery slope, guys. Yeah. So you guys are going to be doing like some like amphetamine version of Palamedes and just, you know.

Well, we can't do anything with amphetamines because the punisher would surely come after us if he caught us doing drugs on the street. True. And think of how much danger everyone around us would be in. Right, right. Yeah, the Punisher just brings a lot of danger wherever he goes. And he is next week. So just, I don't know. Look out for us. Look out for the Punisher. Tell me what the Punisher means to you. And yeah. Bye. Alright. Bye.